Friday, January 26, 2007

Power of the (College) Press

Few people any longer are defending the print media’s coverage of the lacrosse case. In a recent edition of CNN’s Realiable Sources, CNN and Washington Post media correspondent Howard Kurtz termed the event an “absolutely awful performance by the media, pumping this into a big national melodrama.” Christine Brennan, a reporter for USA Today, agreed that it was “an awful performance, an embarrassing time, I think, for journalism . . . I think some people lost their minds in this story.”

One general exception to this pattern exists: the college media. The journalists of the Duke Chronicle have provided more, and better, investigating reporting on the case than every reporter in the country combined except for Joe Neff.

Perhaps because this case has featured the highly unusual event of a prosecutor targeting college students at least in part because of their identities as college students, the college press has proved far more willing than its more established counterparts to ask some hard questions of Nifong’s behavior.

The Chronicle opened this week with an extensive Q+A between reporter Rob Copeland and Richard Brodhead. Copeland’s questions were thoughtful but in no way hostile, the type that needed to be asked. The list included:

“If you were Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty, would you want to come back to a campus where professors have denounced them and where students have held protests against them personally?

“Let’s talk about the attention Duke’s faculty has received in this case, in particular the members of the so-called ‘Group of 88.’ Do you hold the faculty to a higher standard? Should they understand the legal process, and recognize that it’s not appropriate to speak about their individual students to the national press?

“Another committee, the Campus Culture Initiative, has been met by widespread antipathy by students as an effort by the administration to control student life. And when you appoint divisive individuals such as Vice President Moneta, it’s fair to say you invite such criticism. Why do you continue to pursue the CCI?”

Brodhead was very careful in his responses, but nonetheless the interview broke some new ground. He defended the Group of 88’s dubious claim that the April 6 statement did not imply the players were guilty, while avoiding Copeland’s question on whether he holds faculty to a higher standard. On the other hand, his defense of the CCI was half-hearted at best. And he offered a more generous rationalization for his dismissal of Mike Pressler than he had in May, when, according to the Herald-Sun, he told alumni that the coach had to go because “Pressler’s presence would have been a big story.”

The interview was accompanied by a compelling news analysis from Chronicle reporter David Graham, who balanced his story with quotes from a former lacrosse player who graduated last year and from the first arts and sciences professor to challenge the Group of 88, Steve Baldwin.

Baldwin raised the impossible-to-answer counterfactual: “I just wonder what Nifong would have done if he thought that the things he was doing were, in fact, not supported by the University.” And the lacrosse alumnus cited the extraordinary event of faculty statements being included in the change-of-venue motion to express his “hope that Duke will admit some of the instances where they might have been wrong and work to make sure this doesn’t happen again, where Duke students are targeted by Durham authorities and Duke’s own faculty would be cited in a defense change-of-venue motion. It’s in their best interest that it’s not a part of Duke’s reputation.”

The Chronicle, in fact, has been the only media source that any of the team members have spoken with in any depth—in part, no doubt, because they could appreciate the paper’s fairness. A summer article by John Taddei, “Living a Nightmare,” is far and away the best article that’s addressed the human side of Nifong’s actions; team members Bo Carrington, John Walsh, and Tony McDevitt spoke on the record about events on campus, in the classroom, on the team, and with Nifong.

Carrington provided the only glimpse inside the procedurally improper pre-indictment visit by the Durham police to Duke dorms, as Nifong’s minions desperately tried to ferret out information on the whereabouts of Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty at the party. (Nifong refused to do the obvious: just ask the duo’s attorneys.) Carrington also gave a first-hand response to the appearance of the Group of 88’s ad—“I think that all of us kind of checked over our teachers to make sure they weren’t on that list”—that belies the Group’s revisionist history that the ad had nothing to do with prejudging the team.

Walsh offered what turns out to have been a spot-on analysis of Nifong’s dilemma: “"He started something to get re-elected, and now he’s got it, but he’s made the biggest mistake in the world. He buried himself in a hole, you know. What’s he going to turn on it now when he publicly stated that ‘I know there was a rape in this house?’ What can he do? He’s got nothing, absolutely nothing.”

Finally, the Chronicle’s Jared Mueller beat out his competitors at the N&O and the Herald-Sun on Sgt. Mark Gottlieb’s rogue treatment of Duke students before the lacrosse case even emerged. Mueller’s article was chilling—revealing a bigoted and unethical police officer, who appeared to despise Duke students and who clearly treated them differently from other Durham residents.

Add to these articles the paper’s regular coverage, first-rate commentary from columnists Kristin Butler, David Kleban, and Stephen Miller, and prescient editorials on Nifong and the Group of 88’s statement (among others)—and the Chronicle’s performance over the past ten months has been remarkable.

In fact, compare the Chronicle’s coverage to that of the New York Times on this case, but remove the mastheads from the two papers. I suspect that most people would guess that the Times, with its (until recently) simplistic, one-sided articles and commentary was the college newspaper, and the Chronicle’s work was that of the country's paper of record.

Steel: Yes, you have defined the stakes as it applies to the legal system as I see them. Without consequences, the lies told about the Duke players will be repeated again and again, there is no check to balance false reporting out. Now the question is what do we do about it?

How do we create a judicious check? How do we honor the rights of the accused, and the needs of society for sanctioning perjury/filing a false police report in cases where a false report of sexual assault has been made?

These are the questions that must be answered from the legal side to avoid this happening again.

"One general exception to this pattern exists: the college media. The journalists of the Duke Chronicle have provided more, and better, investigating reporting on the case than every reporter in the country combined..."

Perhaps because they haven't (yet) sold their souls to the realities of advertising, and the powers-that-be in town?

I suspect steeltruth views each thread as a continuation of the prior one with Professor Johnson's latest essay added. Empirically he seems to be right. Eventually these threads get around to what was being discussed on the prior one.

The NY Times was somewhat useful, if one sided, in that it showed how Nifong was trying to sell his case. However if we assume the purpose of journalism is find truth and present information fairly then the early Times stories failed.

It occurred to me while reading the interview with brodhead that the board will never fire him. He is SOOOOO grossly incompetent and firing him would constitute an admission that the university had made the biggest mistake since they pressured Hollis Edens out in 1960. That would be worth a few additional bills to a good plaintiff's attorney and they know it.

drunk 19 year-old(read: underage) co-ed stumbles drunk out of the bathroom and right into the view of 2 campus police officers buying popcorn...

they notice her from 20 feet sway...they approach...she fears arrest as they approach...as soon as they start talking to her she says she was raped in the bathroom to divert attention from her drunkenness...

the police bite...sort of...

story falls apart at the hospital emergency room when there are no signs of rape...

girl recants to the nurse...police are told...

shocker...she was charged...albeit a misdemeanor for false reporting....but still charged..

Actually it is not a shocker that Duke would hire someone that hates their students as an adjunct prof. As the Gang of 88 shows hatred and resentment against Duke students is apparently a qualification for employment at Duke in the view of some. It is only a shame at this point.

Congratulations to Duke student journalists. More broadly, congratulations to the Duke student body. All Duke undergraduates have all been victims of the hoax to some degree, yet they have shown far more character than their professors. I'm not suprised. Overall, Dukies are among the best of the best -- and a joy to teach. I do wish, however, that they would take a more active stance against their oppressors.

THE CHRONICLE, the Duke student daily newpaper, is thick with advertising and does quite well in the revenue department, self-supported and free of outside funding. It prints at least 10,000 copies a class day which are widely distributed throughout the vast university campus and in Durham, FREE. Some days it has more bulk than the Herald-Sun. The target audience is the faculty, staff, and students and alumni of Duke and it has deep penetration.

Yes, the students journalists have done quite well covering the hoax, with many details not covered in the local or MSM. Their ongoing problem is not covering the local criminal conspiracy aspects downtown at city hall, the courthouse and DPD. But can you blame them, they are still practically kids. It is up to the likes of Neff to do that job, and he ain't nowheres up to the task yet. Sorry, no Pulitzers for only half a story.

Wow - just read the particulars from the NC bar. Boy, are they are mad at Nifong. It would take a miracle to get him out of this-not sure the late,great Johnnie Cochran could get him off. Is Ray Black licensed in NC? Could be his only hope here. What in the world was Nifong thinking, He has a brain disease.

Steeltruth - I agree with you that women are not held accountable for their violence and are able to hide behind the stereotype of women as vulnerable "damsel in distress."

It is important to point out that this is not a big change. Read the research of the last 30 years. It shows clearly that men and women are about equal in their violence in intimate relationship. Read the Fiebert Bibliography for a long list of abstracts. Most experts agree that domestic violence is 25% men beating up women, 25% women beating up men and %50 BRAWL. When you say things like:

"she uses it in her talks sometimes to high school kids where she sees more and more evidence of girls adopting the previously male traits of oppression and abuse..."

you buy into the stereotype of men as being oppressive and abusive and imply that it is a male trait to be oppressive and abusive. This is misandry. The truth is that this applies to some men and some women. Stereotypes breed double standards. Please don't lump all men into statements such as this.

It has been one of the great and pleasant surprises of this case that the Duke Chronicle has done so much fine work in uncovering the failings of the Duke faculty and administration.

I had initially feared that the journalism department at Duke was filled with the same sort of loopy idealogues that seem to populate many such departments at other universities.

For a true idealogue, which would describe many members of the Duke faculty Group of 88, the truth is only an inconvenient triviality when it gets in the way of their agenda. For such people, the "ends" always justify the "means".

Perhaps the quality and integrity of the Duke Chronicle is an encouraging example of students rebeling against the obvious hypocrisy and oppresive self-righteousness of some members of an arrogant faculty.

There was an interesting piece on the Diane Rehm show (NPR) a few months back regarding newspaper bias. The gist of it was that newspapers get more in circulation by pitching news toward the audience’s biases. The Chronicle is doing a great job, but may have been doing what the Durham Sun have been doing over the course of this hoax: pandering to sympathies of their perceived audience. In the Chronicle’s case, primarily Duke students & alum – presumably ‘pulling’ for the LAX team. We have a tendency to read/support/buy media that supports our view. Why are we following KC’s blog? Likely because we support his views.

7:48 AM:Actually, Duke doesn't have a journalism department as such. Instead, courses on journalism and the media (some practical in orientation, others critical/analytical) are offered through the public policy studies department.I have no direct experience of these courses (my children are a Duke graduate and a current junior, but neither has taken any classes in public policy), so I'm totally speculating here, but it seems possible the public policy context might actually encourage responsibility in journalists and make them think about the social/societal impact of what they write.

Do you also argue that your equal opportunity domestic abuse applies to murder...have we all been duped all these years??? The news of men killing their spouses/girlfriends/children is actually really skewed, and, in fact, rates of murder are equal??? Or do women just participate in violence in "equal rates" up to a point short of murder and then stop?

I recall from reading a Dilbert book by Scott Adams that bosses (any authority figure for that matter)fall into four simple combinations of stupid or smart and good or evil. This is simplistic, yet explains many things when we examine the behavior of people. Given the huge amount of data we now enjoy, we can safely cross "smart" off of the possible Defendant Nifong combinations. "Good" is not holding up very well to scrutiny of any kind either at the moment.

So, it looks like stupid/evil is a one way street to poverty and disgrace, while smart/evil leads to just the opposite. The D.A.'s that railroaded Ray Krone, Gerald Amirault, and many, many others, still have their jobs.

I think that historically women used different means to kill as the physical limitations were more of a problems. But firearms are an equalizer. In addition to machinery that can amplify physical strength.

And of course there's always messing with the parachutes of a skydiver for revenge.

The D.A.'s that railroaded Ray Krone, Gerald Amirault, and many, many others, still have their jobs.

8:19 AM

Add Nancy B. Lamb to that as well. She was the up-front prosecutor in the Little Rascals case and still is a prosecutor in Elizabeth City, NC. I'm presently working on an article about the LR case, and all I can say is that Lamb is a singularly evil person.

The honors and accolades she received following the wrongful convictions of Robert Kelly and Dawn Wilson tell me that Michael Nifong was and is NOT an outlier in the State of North Carolina. He was doing what all prosecutors in that state seem to do: Make up new crimes, lie, and ruin as many lives as possible.

One hopes that this incident will expose what so many of us have known about North Carolina. Experience tells me, however, that soon enough, North Carolina prosecutors will go back to their old ways, which means fabricate more lies to give grand juries, which are simple playtoys of the prosecution.

Think of Nancy B. Lamb as the North Carolina version of Wendy Murphy, but someone with real legal powers as opposed to a talking head.

Observer - The question about intimate murder is a tough question that leaves a great deal of room for speculation. If you look at the intimate murder stats what you see is that the murder of men by their intimate partners has dropped substantially over the last 30 years. In 1976 intimate partners murdered 1357 husbands and 1600 wives. Most of us would consider that nearly equal. When you add into that equation the fact that women more often use things such as poison which goes undetected or that women hire men to do the killing for them the figure comes even closer to being about the same. BTW even when women are convicted of hiring the killer of their husband they are still not listed as a "murderer" and this adds a bit more to the already skewed numbers. At any rate I think we can agree that in in 1976 the rates were close to being equal.

Over the next 30 years the rate of husbands being murdered by their intimate partners has dropped like a stone. The rate of women who are murdered by their husbands has also dropped but not nearly as much. For 2000 the figures were 440 men murdered and 1247 women.

Why the drop? Notice that this time period runs parallel to the advent and growth of the domestic violence industry. They have developed a system of shelters across the country for housing women who are involved in domestic disputes and "in danger." The thinking at this point by some intelligent folks is that the drop in the murder of men is a direct result of the women finding shelter. The DV industry has in effect housed not only the women who are in danger but also the violent women who would endanger their husbands and basically has saved thousands of male lives. The obvious solution now to help women is to find shelters and support for the men in similar situations and this is precisely what the domestic violence industry vehemently fights tooth and nail.

I'd like to offer a few observations from the inside that might help putting things in perspective.

1. The fields that attract the most students at Duke are Economics (by far), History and Biology. The fields that many posters on this blog dislike are at best marginal. This might explain the 88/87's need to make moise to be noticed. (Before you object, let me state immediately that Prof.Chafe and Prof. Wood are not necessarily representative of the whole History Department.) This suggests that the views of the Economics Department are more in tune with the students' than one might think based on the "visibility" of the 88/87.

2. Duke students are generally level-headed. Of course they do stupid things, occasionally. But we all do in our everyday lives and surely did in our college days. However, the occasional stupid thing does not define one's cahracter. The problem with the 88/87's frame of mind is that they mistake the occasional pathology for the normal state of things. My guess is that this frame of mind is the product of the dominant approach in their fields of study, but I'm speculating here.

3. Despite all the noise and the theatrics that they make, the 88/87 are not that relevant to how students live their lives. The majority of students are remarkably resistant to indoctrination when the message clashes with their everyday perception of things. My guess is that this happens because level-headed people take a very practical/empirical approach to life: if they see that apples fall down, they are not likely to take seriously theories that claim that apples fall up.

4. Where the 88/87 types are relevant is in the administration. You can easily check this kind of data nation-wide. The humanities are typically over-represented in administrative positions (they sure are at Duke). There are several reasons why. The two that most often come up in conversations/discussions are: (a) "innate" political activism; (b) their salaries are (contrary to what appears to be a common belief) lower than average so that a deanship is worth more to them than to others.

All of the above might not fully explain some of the things that you find puzzling, e.g., the lack of spectacular actions by faculty and/or students against the 88/87 or the perceived administration's timidity. It should, however, provide a glimpse into why so many people behave the way they do on campus. The MSM is hopelessly inadequate in catching these aspects of Duke's reality because they focus exclusively on the spectacular and thereby miss the truly important forces. The Chronicle's student-journalists, in contrast, live this reality everyday.

Wendy Murphy has been outspoken against the use of rape kits to gain DNA swabs, since DNA can be used both to identify those who commit rape, but also to exonerate those who are innocent. According to Murphy, women who make accusations of rape always are telling the truth, and never make an error when identifying the "rapists." I am not making this up.

Early on in this case, Wendy McElroy told me in an email that feminists do not like DNA testing because it often will tell a different story than the accuser is telling, thus discrediting the "women always are correct" when they make rape accusations. In fact, it was McElroy who really got me into this case.

Since I started writing on the Duke case, I have received many emails and letters from people whose loved ones have been falsely accused of rape and who have endured hell in the so-called justice system. One that I received last night was especially disheartening, and I will be writing on it later.

Prosecutors want to make it seem as though Nifong is an exception to the rule, but I do not believe it for a second. In the world of rape and feminism and "justice," those accused of rape find themselves in an Alice-in-Wonderland situation where they are not permitted any defense at all, and where guilt is pre-determined. Those who prosecute these cases often are just as dishonest as Nifong, but get away with it.

There is another reason why we have the people from the "isms" departments (where most of the 88/87 are populated) making so much noise. Most academic fields are about teaching and research, and there is a sense that one is looking for "truth" or at least more knowledge.

In the natural sciences, for example, people are interested in learning more about what already exists, but of which we still do not know or understand. In my own field of economics, we look to see how laws of economics reflect the actions of individuals.

The "isms" studies, however, are very different. They are about grievances and the seizing of power, and are heavily influenced by marxism. In the first chapter of his book, "Human Action," Ludwig von Mises writes about the "polylogism" of marxists and historicists.

Because people in these departments reject any notion of truth, they concentrate upon power instead. In their world, there is nothing but power, and to make the world "better," they must seize it.

However, as we have seen when people of this mentality actually have power, we have the mass murder that occurred in Russia, China, Cambodia, and elsewhere during the 20th Century. The people of these studies can talk about power and justice all they want, but when they actually have power, poverty and injustice abound.

This situation intersects with the fact that elite universities like Duke believe they need to increase their black and radical women faculty members. Such people are concentrated in the "isms" studies, so one ends up with a critical mass of people who believe that they should be running the university.

One cannot imagine just how much these kind of faculty members hate the other areas of study. Since they reject truth, they scorn anyone who is in search of it. Thus, we see how they acted during this case. Believe me, that is typical of these kinds of faculty.

How can that be true when only about half of the rape cases that are brought to police result in arrest and only about half of those are prosecuted? Certainly some of those cases don't move forward because the women decide againt it, her story unravels or there isn't enough evidence to reasonably win a case, but this is a pretty large drop off rate.

It doens't seem correct then,based on the facts and statistics, that the guilt of the accused is 'presumed', the facts, prosecution and conviction rates would seem to show the opposite, that it is significantly less than 50% chance that a woman will even get her case as far as a trial, where the conviction rate I think is also around 50%....this doesn't sound like the poor guy is a goner as soon as the 'lying' woman 'cries' rape.

It amazes me that intelligent people with wives, sisters and daughters somehow believe that all the other women out there are crazy, vindictive and unbalanced.

And bad liars to boot, surely a look at most rape cases where the victims do know the accused, were also drinking and engaging in other high risk activities and whose stories usually don't include injuries or violent struggles could come up with a better story than 'I told him no and he didn't stop so I froze'

Truly, the liars tell stories like 3/4/5 or 20 men raped me, chocked me, slapped me, kicked me in the head, while I struggled to breath and fought them as best I could.

Kind of like this woman's story, preposterous and heroic and a complete lie.

The false claims are those of the girl who is out after curfew and says she was abducted at gunpoint by a guy in a mask, not girl who says she went to a party, drank till she passed out and then got raped.

The New York Times coverage of this case has been an embarassment. After the Jason Blair debacle and the WMD false stories they ran, I had hoped the editors would at least try to stop injecting their own narratives in their stories and write more to the facts.

It is pretty sad when the paper of record gets trumped again and again by the Raleigh News and Observer and when a review of their early stories in hindsight should be humiliating for the reporters that glossed over again and again the huge holes in this woman's story.

My wife has worked in the administration at three small liberal arts colleges. At the most prestigious (a top 20 type) she worked directly in development, at the others she was closely but not directly involved...

She says there are two significant spikes of money that come in - one in December, for taxes, and one in May/June - reunion and graduation time. But, she says, older, bigger, more established schools get most of their money - like, 60% or so - in the fall. Her guess is that Duke falls in that category.

So if their fiscal year runs July-June, and right now they're at 20% of last year's total, what would that mean?

Her answer was:

"Wow. That's... not good. Without looking at all the specific numbers, that's a catastrophe..."

I watch almost no TV at all but recently saw a "comedy" in which the wife, Debra, was railing abusively at the husband, Raymond, as he slunk away. I was amazed at the hatred on her face as she continued relentlessly badgering him. Disgusted, I turned the TV off.

Are there comedies on TV with men behaving this way?

Here is how this mindset has affected the Duke Lacrosse Case:

Women are now allowed to disrespect and abuse men, even publicly and for entertainment. It's politically correct.

And that is just one of the reasons why Crystal Gail Mangum has been allowed to abuse these three men through her false accusations.

It is now acceptable behavior.

It is time for all humans to realize that it's wrong for people to hurt each other, physically, emotionally, or legally regardless of their gender.

Had this been the politically correct stance, I don't believe this travesty would have occurred.

A great post by the "non-arrogant" Duke prof at 9:10 am. He has hit a bulls-eye about campus life.

There is definitely a connection between administrators and the politicized departments. His comments about students are also on the money.

Most Duke students will read the list of 88 signees of the letter congratulating the noisy protesters as a who's who of professors to avoid.

Economics is definitely not part of the left politics at universities. Even if individual faculty are politically liberal, their discipline definitely puts them at odds with the cultural Marxists. The fact that econ is the most popular major at Duke will tell you that most students are not being indoctrinated by advocacy departments.

School newspapers hold the key to destroying the near monopoly that the advocacy departments have over the political culture at universitites. Since the majority of students don't really agree with it but go along enough to get through school and into a good place in the job market, there is an undercurrent of dissatisfaction.

From the beginning, the Chronicle staff must have detected that the case was a crock and that the pot-bangers and their faculty enablers were a lynch mob of ideological zealots intent on pushing their narrative regardless of the facts or how much it hurt the innocent players.

As for the signers of the statement, they're fools. The Karla Holloways and Houston Bakers think they're playing the system but they are being played. Their departments were created at a time of ferment to make sure that people with real power could keep an eye on them. They think they are the civil rights movement fighting entrenched power. In reality they are more like the black prison guards that southern law enforcement used to use to administer beatings to civil rights workers.

It was a great strategy. Take the most vocal people, stick them in their own college department, let them vent as much as they want and the powers that be can go on running things just like they always did. As long as people are paying attention to posturing clowns like Al Sharpton, and political hustlers like Jesse Jackson, they will never be able to muster the kind of political coalition that could have enough strength to divert the kind of resources that would be necessary to provide meaningful governmental help for people in poverty. As long as people are arguing over the children of minority doctors and lawyers being given college preference over the children of white firemen and policemen, nobody will notice that the sons and daughters of CEO's are being being admitted to the Ivy league ahead of academically more qualified Asian immigrants.

But students are the best hope. They tend to be more idealistic and they have a lot less to lose. And they are willing to challenge prevailing orthodoxies. So it's not really surprising that they could see through the politically correct haze surrounding the rogue prosecution at Duke.

KC you are too kind to the NYTimes. When the facts began to come out contrary to the "guilty as charged" implications of NYT's earlier reports and analysis, there has been no acknowledgment of error, editorially or otherwise, and facts favorable to the accused Lacross players have been ignored or only partially reported on back pages. One would expect far more of a responsible newspaper as the NYT used to be!

Hooray for the Duke Chronicle--the lighthouse in the fog, the beacon on the hill, the paper that kept its head while most others, especially the Durham Herald Sun and, my former favorite, the NYT, lost theirs! These student writers were clear headed, articulate, and fair, and they were notable exceptions in the world of an almost universally foolish media response to this case.

Kilgore and Steeltruth, I am sure you are aware your presentation and interpretation of the intimate partner abuse statistics are very controversial. However, as much as I would like to, I just don't have time to debate this right now. Maybe later!

As for Singapore... - Our system in the United States is too corrupt to have a death penalty. I am not saying that murderers do not deserve payback. I am saying that we really can't trust our courts and prosecuting attorneys, with their hand-picked juries of "peers" to do the right thing.

*It's name is The Chronicle, not The Duke Chronicle. This is because the paper is wholly independent of the school and would have to get a licensing contract to use the Duke name (and it would be unlikely to be approved by Duke nonetheless, since they have no control over the paper and most likely don't want any potential linkage in case of a libel case or similar). You're probably wondering about the website (www.dukechronicle.com) - originally the paper leased space on the Duke.edu server, but in light of contentious debate over a few editorials in the past few years (pre-lax), the university and the paper came to a mutual agreement that the paper needed its own web server. As TheChronicle.com and Chronicle.com were both already taken, and because the university insisted the paper leave its server, DukeChronicle.com became the domain.

*There is no journalism department at Duke.

*Students are not paid to write for the paper. They learn quickly to balance school and schoolwork with writing and editing.

*The Chronicle is wholly independent of the school - financially, editorially, etc., and has been since 1991 when it separated from the university and formed its own non-profit corporation - Duke Student Publishing Inc. It pays the school $$ to lease a portion of a building on campus for its offices - but that's the extent of its legal Duke affiliation. It has a separate board of trustees, publishing corporation, budget, et. al. from the rest of the university, as it is completely independent.

*There is no "adult oversight" of the Chronicle in terms of day-to-day publication and especially in terms of editorial content. There is a paid adult staff that handles advertising and accounting practices (yes, the Chronicle survives off advertising just like any other paper media organization). The publisher is also a paid adult, but he does not interfere in daily content/practices/editorials (his role is identical to the publisher role at any major newspaper in the country - hands off content, wholly business).

I mention these distinctions not only because they are noteworthy, but because if you truly feel you value The Chronicle, you should consider supporting this worthy non-profit endeavor by either subscribing to the print copy or perhaps making a donation to the non-profit governing organization, Duke Student Publishing, Inc.

I am a former Chronicle editor (and Duke alum). Other Chronicle writers have been fortunate to be the beneficiaries of Chronicle scholarships to pursue journalism internships. PLEASE consider giving to the paper in some way if you truly enjoy its work - perhaps you might consider donating the cost of a year's subscription (but continuing to read online instead). You can reach Publisher Jonathan Angier at 919-684-3811.

From the article:"It is hard to run the risk of trying the case on principle, and run the risk of them getting a misdemeanor conviction that would be on their record forever," he added.***

If you are unwilling to risk even a misdemeanor conviction to pursue your rights as a citizen (and perhaps to protect others from a similar situation), you have lost my sympathy when you complain those rights have been violated.

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I am from Higgins Beach, in Scarborough, Maine, six miles south of Portland. After spending five years as track announcer at Scarborough Downs, I left to study fulltime in graduate school, where my advisor was Akira Iriye. I have a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard, and an M.A. from the University of Chicago. At Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, I teach classes in 20th century US political, constitutional, and diplomatic history; in 2007-8, I was Fulbright Distinguished Chair for the Humanities at Tel Aviv University.

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"From the Scottsboro Boys to Clarence Gideon, some of the most memorable legal narratives have been tales of the wrongly accused. Now “Until Proven Innocent,” a new book about the false allegations of rape against three Duke lacrosse players, can join these galvanizing cautionary tales . . , Taylor and Johnson have made a gripping contribution to the literature of the wrongly accused. They remind us of the importance of constitutional checks on prosecutorial abuse. And they emphasize the lesson that Duke callously advised its own students to ignore: if you’re unjustly suspected of any crime, immediately call the best lawyer you can afford."--Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times Book Review